Southeast seiners get another opening, with one district carrying a below-forecast pink season

Southeast Alaska purse seiners get a 39-hour opening starting 6 a.m. Tuesday across most of the region's fishing districts, most of it running until Wednesday evening. A few districts and bays are open Tuesday only.

Behind the routine schedule is a lopsided season. Through the latest week, seiners had landed about 3.5 million salmon, most of them pink — and a single district, District 13, accounted for more than half of that, some 1.86 million fish, far outpacing anywhere else. Fish and Game calls District 13 the region's highlight, with more than 4 million pink salmon caught there this season under a two-days-on, two-days-off rotation. Several other districts drew little or no effort.

The strength in that one district stands against a soft regionwide picture. A joint NOAA Fisheries and Fish and Game forecast issued last November put the 2026 Southeast pink harvest at about 19 million fish — near-average, but at the low end of the projected range, with the wider interval spanning weak and average years. Two of the region's test fisheries ran well below average through July, and the overall fleet effort this season sits below the recent 10-year average.

The state's Petersburg office issued the opening Sunday, with the usual near-shore closures around salmon streams and inlets. The next seine announcement is due Thursday.